Kristy and the Middle School Vandal

  “Well, maybe he thinks that since he’s suspended, he can do whatever he wants,” Abby observed. “I mean, they can’t suspend him twice, can they?”

  “They can expel him,” Claudia pointed out. “So forget that.”

  “Listen, let’s not forget about this mystery.” I held up the most recent clue. “B-two or not B-two … that is the question,” I read aloud, to refresh everyone’s memory.

  “Didn’t Shakespeare say that?” asked Claudia. Now it was her turn to grin. “Only he spelled it differently? Like two-bee or not two-bee?”

  We all had to laugh at that.

  Abby said, “So does this mean we look for places where Shakespeare hangs out? Like, the library?”

  “Or the classrooms, the ones in which teachers are teaching Shakespeare this semester,” suggested Mary Anne.

  I reminded them of the second part of the clue: “Are you sitting down?”

  That stumped us. Usually, when you ask someone if they are sitting down, you mean, be prepared for some really shocking news. But that didn’t seem to fit here.

  “Maybe you have to sit down to find the clue. Like when you figure out which classroom or part of the library it might be in, you have to sit down to see it,” suggested Abby.

  Stacey wrinkled her nose. “That’s pretty obscure,” she said. “I mean, suppose you sat in the wrong chair? You’d miss it altogether.”

  “And wouldn’t Cary like that,” I muttered.

  “That’s it! That’s it! Stace, you’re a genius!” shouted Claudia.

  “Thank you, but what’s it?” asked Stacey, unfazed by Claudia’s going ballistic right there at the lunch table.

  “The right seat! Like when you buy tickets to plays and things, you have to sit in the right seat. Because the seats are all numbered.”

  “Seat B-two,” I said. I gave Claudia a high-five.

  “Most excellent, dude,” said Abby, in her best surfer voice. “And of course the only numbered seats at SMS are in …”

  “The auditorium!” we all cried at once.

  At that moment I felt it. A creeping sensation on my neck. I looked over my shoulder, and there was Cary Retlin, walking oh-so-casually by our table.

  “Shhhh!” I commanded everyone.

  But of course it was too late. Cary had heard us.

  I wondered if he would sabotage us. I didn’t trust him one bit. Especially when he gave me that sly smile of his before he walked away.

  “We have to get to the auditorium. Right now!” I exclaimed. Visions of Cary beating us there danced in my head.

  “Too late now,” said Abby. “Lunch is over.”

  Sadly true. We would have to wait. I comforted myself with the fact that Cary had to go to class now, as well.

  But I knew that Cary was sneaky in the extreme. If he wanted to sabotage this clue, he’d find a way.

  The moment the last bell of the day rang, we flew from our classrooms like homing pigeons, not even stopping by our lockers. We were breathing hard, as if we’d been in a race, when we reached the auditorium door.

  Abby yanked it open and we stampeded down the aisle.

  There, taped beneath seat B2, was the usual white envelope with the patronizing words, “Clue — in case you hadn’t noticed” printed on the front.

  As I was reaching for it, I heard Mal, who was behind me, say, “You know, Abby. Like the beeps on a watch.”

  I turned, momentarily distracted. “What?”

  “Abby and I were talking about the bathroom incidents yesterday and I was just telling Abby that since she was in the bathroom right at noon, maybe the beeping sounds she heard were the beeps from a watch, set to beep every hour.”

  “Like my watch,” I said. “That proves it. That proves it’s Cary Retlin.”

  “Chill, Kristy,” said Claudia. “It just proves that whoever it was has a watch that beeps. And everybody’s watch does that these days.”

  It was true. Although I was convinced in my heart that this was another nail in the coffin of proof I was constructing in which to bury Cary, I had to agree that it wasn’t conclusive evidence.

  I turned back and reached for the envelope again.

  This time a loud voice shouted, “What the —”

  I jerked my hand back.

  Someone screamed. Something crashed.

  We all jumped.

  “Behind the curtain!” gasped Mary Anne, pointing.

  Words like “sabotage” and “Cary” and “uh-oh” went through my head. But before I could act, the door next to the stage opened, and Mr. Kingbridge walked in with a group of adults, among them Mr. Oates and a woman who was holding a microcassette recorder.

  “I’m glad that the News is taking an interest in this problem, Ms. Bernstein,” Mr. Oates said in a clear, carrying voice.

  Ms. Bernstein just nodded.

  Another crash, another scream.

  Mr. Kingbridge jumped onto the stage without hesitation and yanked the curtain aside.

  We gasped at the chaos that met our eyes.

  The scenery from the last school play, which had been propped against the back wall, had been torn apart, some of it shredded. And the props — furniture, rugs, a bicycle, and a ladder — had been tied together in the center of the stage with the ropes used to move the backstage props around. The knots looked numerous, and huge. Someone would probably need a saw to cut through the heavy rope.

  We hurried forward. We stopped.

  Clearly visible in the middle of the stage floorboards, in front of the tied-up furniture, were the letters “MK” in green chalk, although a different shade from the green I’d seen on the bathroom door.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” demanded Mr. Kingbridge in an angry voice.

  “Out of control! See?” exclaimed Mr. Oates to the Stoneybrook News reporter. She was raising a camera to take pictures.

  Just then, Mr. Milhaus came hurrying down the aisle on the far side of the auditorium, carrying his mop and bucket. “I shall clean it up,” he said. “Do not worry. It shall be dealt with.”

  He’s destroying evidence, I thought. But before I could put the thought into words, Mr. Oates turned, pointed at us, and said, “AHA!”

  The other adults turned in our direction.

  “Aha?” repeated Claudia. “What does that mean?”

  “It means guilty, guilty, guilty,” muttered Abby.

  Mr. Kingbridge frowned, slipping into his school disciplinarian mode. “Kristy. Claudia … what are all you girls doing in the auditorium?” he asked.

  “I should think that would be obvious,” said Mr. Oates. He turned to the reporter. “Go on, take their picture! SMS vandals.”

  “No way!” I cried. And then I realized that of course, Cary Retlin had sabotaged us after all. Set us up. Framed us to take the fall. He knew we’d be coming to the auditorium after school. So he made his mischief, told someone about it, and waited for us to be caught.

  Steaming, I said in a loud voice, “We didn’t have anything to do with this. Use that camera to photograph the evidence, not us.”

  Mr. Kingbridge said, “Let’s not jump to any conclusions.”

  I said, “Mr. Kingbridge, may I — no, may we speak to you privately for a moment?”

  A few minutes later, we were standing with Mr. Kingbridge on one side of the auditorium, and I was telling him all about Cary: how he’d taken my watch, how he’d erased my math homework, and how he’d been absent from Stacey’s class when the second fire alarm was pulled. I told him about Abby hearing a beeping watch in the bathroom, too.

  Mr. Kingbridge had pulled a small notepad out of his coat pocket. He jotted down notes as I talked, and when I had finished, he took down all our names.

  “Very well,” he said. “I don’t think you girls are involved. You can go. And I’ll give Cary Retlin a call.”

  We made a hasty exit (after a quick, unobtrusive detour to pick up the clue from beneath seat B2).

  “That’ll teach him,” I said when
we were outside.

  Claudia shook her head. “I don’t know, Kristy. If Cary’s not the troublemaker, you might have gotten him into a lot of trouble he didn’t deserve.”

  “He’s guilty,” I insisted. I was still furious over being set up. “Believe me, Cary Retlin is guilty.”

  When the doorbell rang that afternoon at Claudia’s house, right after I’d called the last BSC meeting of the week to order, none of us paid any attention. Mary Anne, Stacey, Mal, and I were digging through the items the four teams of kids had scored in the scavenger hunt while Jessi wrote in the club notebook and Abby made horrible jokes. And Claudia, of course, was passing around junk food, in this case mint chocolate M&M’s, and All Natural Potato Chips.

  “This is a disgusting combination,” remarked Mal, munching down on a mix of the two.

  “The chips are good,” said Stacey.

  Someone knocked on Claudia’s door. “Low profile,” she warned, and we put the junk food out of sight as she opened the door.

  Janine stood there. “Someone is here to see Kristy,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “He didn’t say,” replied Janine. She turned and left as I stood up.

  “He?” I wondered.

  “Go see who it is,” said Mary Anne practically. “That’s the best way to find out.”

  “Duh,” I said and went down the stairs to find …

  Cary Retlin, standing just inside the front door. He didn’t look very glad to see me. In fact, he looked even less glad to see me than I was to see him.

  “Thanks a lot, Kristy,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I have a few things to say to you, and then I’ll go.” He held up his hand and ticked off his fingers as he talked.

  “One, I was in class when the bathrooms were flooded, as my teacher will tell you. I don’t have any telepathic powers, so telekinetically turning on and clogging the sinks is out of the question. Two, I was in class when the first fire alarm was pulled, which also can be confirmed by my teacher, and I was in the guidance office when the second alarm was pulled, which is why Stacey didn’t see me in class. Three, today, this afternoon, when the stage in the auditorium was trashed, I was tutoring a sixth-grader in math. If you want a sworn affidavit from him, I could probably arrange it. Four, not only would I never destroy a car, but if I ever wanted to, I wouldn’t make the dumb mistake of not finding out who the car belonged to before I did it. I know which car Mr. Kingbridge drives, not that I have anything against Mr. Kingbridge.”

  He lowered his hand to put his fists on his hips. “If you have any doubts about whether I’m telling you the truth, you can give Mr. Kingbridge a call. I just left him at his office, where he and I spent two hours of ‘quality time’ together, thanks to you. I thought you were a better ‘investigator,’ Kristy. If you had a license, I’d probably ask that it be revoked.”

  I was shocked. Stunned. And mortified. Now that Cary was finally denying his involvement in the vandalism, I knew he was telling the truth. And I felt awful for being a tattletale, like some little kid. I tried to say something, but Cary cut me off.

  “Let me finish. Just for your information, Mr. Kingbridge called all of my teachers about what you’d told him, and my parents. My parents were not happy campers, even though Mr. Kingbridge did come to the conclusion that I wasn’t responsible for any of the things you so confidently accused me of. He did say I had to return your watch. So here.”

  Cary thrust the watch toward me. I looked down at it, then up at Cary.

  “Uh, Cary, I’m sorry. The other BSC members didn’t think I should tell Mr. Kingbridge about everything. But I thought you’d set us up to get caught in the auditorium.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” said Cary. He smiled a very faint smile. “Lacks subtlety.”

  “Whatever. I am sorry. I have a big mouth sometimes and I speak without thinking.”

  Cary shrugged.

  “Keep the watch,” I said. “Until we solve your mystery.”

  The old smile came back. “You mean if you solve my mystery,” he said and left, as usual, before I could answer.

  I went back upstairs, where I was bombarded with questions from everyone, especially after they heard who my visitor had been.

  “Wow,” said Abby. “Way to go, Kristy.”

  I felt my face redden. But I couldn’t really be annoyed with Abby. She was right.

  “You apologized,” said Mary Anne. “You did the right thing.”

  “True. And I told Cary to keep my watch — until we win the Mystery War.” I grinned. “You know what he said? ‘If you win.’ ”

  “So I guess his two hours of ‘quality time’ with Mr. Kingbridge didn’t slow him down much,” said Stacey.

  “It would slow me down,” said Mal.

  “Yeah. I’d rather dance in front of a hostile audience than spend two hours being interrogated in the school office,” Jessi added.

  “Well, we’re back to where we started,” I said. “Cary’s not the one behind the vandalism. Somebody seems to be using the Mischief Knights as cover. We don’t have any idea who it is. And there are only two school days left until the teachers go on strike.”

  “Let’s go over the clues and our ideas again,” Claudia suggested.

  We all groaned, and Mary Anne grabbed a piece of paper. But Mal said, “Stop. I realized last night that I should have been writing about both mysteries in the mystery notebook all along. So I worked on it for an hour or so and brought it up to date.” She held up the mystery notebook we’d started when we’d been stalked by a particularly nasty character. “And a review of it could help us take a fresh look at the vandalism mystery.”

  “Great,” said Mary Anne.

  Mal flipped the notebook open to the heading “Vandals,” and took notes as we talked.

  “Okay, it’s not Cary,” I said. “And it’s not the real Mischief Knights.”

  “And if it’s not Cary, is it any student at SMS?” asked Jessi. “I mean, if the bathroom was flooded during class time, it wouldn’t be a student who signed himself or herself out, because that would point to who did it.”

  Abby suggested, “Old Oates for Votes could have done it. You know, the way he showed up with that reporter as the MKs struck was awfully convenient, don’t you think?”

  I could tell Abby liked the idea of Mr. Oates’s being the culprit, maybe even as much as I had liked the idea of blaming everything on Cary.

  I suddenly flashed on Mr. Milhaus, hurrying into the auditorium that afternoon. And just as suddenly, I saw the mop and bucket that I had almost fallen over after the fire drill — and the wet floor. Just that one spot, near the fire alarm.

  I hadn’t seriously considered Mr. Milhaus as the culprit, but what if he were? I told everybody about the mop and bucket and the wet floor. Mal said, “Mr. Milhaus? Why?” then answered her own question. “He was upset the night of the meeting, about the budget cuts that would affect the custodians. Maybe he’s doing all this to keep his job. You know, to make himself seem indispensable.”

  It seemed possible. Outrageous, true, but possible.

  Claudia wasn’t buying it, though. “That’s pretty extreme, don’t you think? I vote for Brad Simon and Troy Parker. They’re not even supposed to be around SMS, but they always are, especially when something weird happens.”

  “And don’t forget all the nasty things Troy was saying about SMS and Mr. Kingbridge, that day Logan shot baskets with him,” added Mary Anne. She hesitated. “But it’s still not a deciding factor. There are good arguments in favor of each suspect.”

  Mal turned a page. Everyone else was quiet. Then she looked up. “We should check the beeping watch clue,” she said. “Tomorrow. See who has a watch, and whether it’s the kind that beeps.”

  It was better than nothing. We agreed to that, fielded some phone calls, and finished off the M&M’s and most of the chips. Finally, we had a chance to look at the clu
e Cary had left taped under seat B2.

  It read:

  “Okay, that’s it. This clue makes NO SENSE,” said Abby.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. I stared at the drawing of the four witches. We all copied the clue down, so we could think about it over the weekend.

  Then Claudia’s clock rolled over to 6:00, and I adjourned the meeting.

  And left thinking that maybe Cary wasn’t the green Mischief Knight, but he sure knew how to cause trouble.

  For the theme of the final leg of the scavenger hunt, Claudia and Mary Anne had chosen nature.

  Saturday was sunny and breezy, a nice morning for a nature-themed scavenger hunt. Parents on their way to do errands, or to play themselves, dropped the kids off at Claudia’s house. Mrs. Prezzioso, in blinding tennis whites, left Jenny, who was dressed in perfectly creased overalls with a red bandanna tied around her neck, a crisp, white, scalloped-edge T-shirt, red socks trimmed with white lace, and spotless white tennis shoes. Claudia, with her keen fashion sense, could tell that this was Mrs. Prezzioso’s (and Jenny’s) take on what to wear to a scavenger hunt. The younger Hobarts, James, age eight, Mathew, age six, and Johnny, age four, arrived wearing more casual attire — jeans, heavily patched or in need of patches, and an assortment of faded T-shirts. They waved as their father drove away with their oldest brother, Ben.

  “He’s going to football practice,” explained James. Then he grinned. “What you Yanks call soccer.” (The Hobarts are from Australia.)

  Becca, Jessi’s eight-year-old sister, showed up on her bike, along with her best friend Charlotte Johanssen, who is also eight. The last two to arrive were seven-year-old Rosie Wilder, a sometime child actor but at the moment looking mostly like a kid who was ready to have a good time, and finally four-year-old Jamie Newton, who ran across the lawn calling, “Claudee Kishi, Claudee Kishi!” and flung his arms around her. Jamie, easygoing and very affectionate, is one of the BSC’s favorite kids.

  Claudia and Mary Anne had to give the kids only the most basic explanation of the scavenger hunt. Not only had the word gotten around, but the Hobarts had already decided on a name for their team: The Klue Krushers.